[Jay]

I heard it too, very well done and not full of “fluff”. Great for David and Anna and real agriculture. Thanks, David for being there and also speaking up.

[Jay]

Very impressive! Good work.

[Jay]

I have gone to replacing all wrist pin bushings with a heavyduty bearing made for the purpose because of the slop I find even with a brand new bushing. The bearings take away all the slop and make the mowing much smoother in my experience. Several shops sell them. Jay

[Jay]

A couple of observations to start with: This collar does not look too small to me at all. Looking at the placement of the collar, It looks as though it will settle back onto the shoulder with the weight of the harness and the slightest effort to pull anything.
I use NE harness, horses are about 15-16 hands, 14-1500 lbs. The short tug (hame to D ring is no more than 20 inches even on the biggest horse 16 h, 1500+lbs and long in the body. The smallest horse (youngest) the short tug is only 19″. The way I measure the length of the short tug is to put the end of the tape on the hame bolt and run it back to the D ring.
I like to have the D ring right behind the elbow, in line with the girth. Height wise it wants to be where the angle of the short tug to the hame is exactly 90 degrees. The D ring is held in the correct position by adjusting the back-pad and belly band buckles to achieve that 90 degree angle. A framing square helps here, held against the back side of the hame and along the top of the short tug.

Hope this is useful. Jay

[Jay]

Donn, would you consider using some judicious heat on the pins to try getting them to move? Jay

[Jay]

I second Erika’s comment above. Jay

[Jay]

I’m not quite sure what you are asking. Any chance you could post a picture?

[Jay]

I like Donn use none on the bar. Keeping the ball on the end of the knife oiled is very important. I use regular motor oil in my oil can. I suggested using a hypoid gear oil bottle for an oil can as it fits in the mower well. Fill with regular motor oil or what ever you have available. I have on occasion used used motor oil when out of new oil.
Jay

[Jay]

I echo Donn’s comment about making sure the ball joint connection with the pitman stick is oiled REGULARLY. I make sure I have an oil can with me whenever mowing and put a few drops on the ball every time around a large field. This is a classic example of regular maintenance being way better than dumping alot on just once in a while. (a quart plastic hypoid gear oil container makes a nicely shaped oil can and fits into the hole on the mower well). If the ball feels warm to the touch, it’s not getting near enough oil and will wear out both the ball and the 2 arms that surround it from the pitman stick. Jay

[Jay]

Lynn Miller’s Mower book recommends 10-30 I believe, and that’s what I use. Often any old oil left in a machine will be thick and so the new oil may leak more. New seals at the lower end of the pitman shaft would be in order. Jay

[Jay]

Tom, I have used the local Pete’s Tire barn here – across the river from Brattleboro for farm tires- they have good service and have treated me well on price as well (and they wrestle with the tire and tube). The man behind the desk is a farmer – nephew of a local butcher. Jay

[Jay]

I will start by acknowledging all the points in favor of using a tractor, particularly related to the front end time requirements.
“This is primarily faster on the front end (no grooming ext.), I can work for longer periods of time per hitch/has lights to work at night, and most importantly it seems to fit with the sometimes chaotic dynamic of our farm.”
We have farmed for 35 years with only horses for tractive effort by conscious choice. The biggest single reason in our thinking at the start was soil compaction. We had been using a Farmall Super A and watching the tire tracks in the dirt, I just knew that I was never getting close to undoing the compaction the wheels created with each pass across the field being tilled. My observation is the same on haying. Look at any hay field after the hay is picked up and there is no area of the field where the stubble standing up. It’s all lying down from wheel tracks. The compaction is over the entire field.
Now let me be clear: I am not making judgments here. I am bringing up what I see as a completely under emphasized economic issue here.
We have used only horse power(1-4 at a time) for all our field work, and I am quite sure there is some amount of economic advantage to the lack of compaction in our fields. We do use a tractor with a bucket loader to load the manure spreaders, but I don’t want that weight on the fields, so the horses pull the spreaders. If I drive our empty pickup across the field, it leaves tracks you can feel with your feet, an indication of the softness/uncompactedness of the soil in general. This has come at a cost – time on a daily basis. It has made me do all I can to make the chore routines as efficient as possible, but it could still be improved alot. We set out to use our land in ways that fit in with using the horses and what they could do well rather than deciding what we wanted to do and figuring out how to do it. I knew intuitively that if I had a tractor available, I would start using it more and more over time and we wanted to try to avoid that pitfall, since that was part of our overall goal.
How do I feel about it now? I think we were reasonably successful with the goals we set out to achieve and within the limitations (self imposed and external) we had. Necessity really is the mother of invention. When there is no other way available, you figure out how to get it done and I have learned more that I can begin to tell from having to figure out how to make it work with the horeses. Would I do it again? I don’t think I would change much. I have no regrets about the choices. It did mean we couldn’t do as much as we might otherwise have been able to do.
Recently we have taken on a younger couple with a 100 member CSA – they are using about 1/2 the land for their market gardens. We also share the horses 4 + 1 more borrowed occasionally. They came with 2 Farmall cubs which they used some the 1st 2 years and have not even gotten running this year. It makes a difference having help enough that every morning the horses are in the barn and most mornings are harnessed as part of chores, whether or not there are immediate plans to use any of them. The regular practice for both us and the horses is a real benefit for all. Hitching spots around the farm are another improvement that pays back way more than the time it took to make them.
I’ll stop before I ramble further.

[Jay]

I agree, scratches. Be sure to clip all the hair under the fetlock and as far up the back of the leg the irritation goes to facilitate drying to help kill the fungus. I have used athletes foot cream on scratches with good results. Use care when cutting the hair – the scissors may tickle and cause the leg to jump a little. Jay

[Jay]

I believe the most critical parts are available for the JD#3- I have worked on one and gotten some parts for one- the pitman shaft is same size as all the others, and axle seals are the same. Cutter bar parts are all the standard. Carl and Jay F, you each have one, yes? Jay

[Jay]

Thank you for sharing Carl. I think you may be speaking for a number of us here. Jay

[Author]

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